Otto Wels

Who was Otto Wels?

Otto Wels was the chairman of the Social Democratic Party of Germany from 1919 and a member of parliament from 1920 to 1933.

Born in Berlin the son of an inn-keeper, Wels in 1891 began an apprenticeship as a paper hanger and joined the SPD. From 1895 to 1897 he served in the German Army. From 1906 he worked as a trade union official, party secretary in the Province of Brandenburg and the Vorwärts press committee. In 1912 he achieved a mandate for the Reichstag parliament and by the agency of August Bebel joined the SPD executive committee the next year.

In the German Revolution of 9 November 1918, Wels was a member of the Berlin Workers' council of the SPD and USPD. He was appointed military commander of the city and consequently had to deal with the occupation of the Stadtschloss by revolutionary forces including violent fights with Freikorps units. Upon the election of Friedrich Ebert as Reich President on 11 February 1919 he acted as presiding officer of the SPD and was formally elected chairman together with Hermann Müller on June 14.

In 1920 Wels and Carl Legien organised the general strike that helped defeat the right-wing Kapp Putsch, after which Wels enforced the resignation of his party colleague Gustav Noske as Reich Minister of Defence. He argued for the foundation of the Reichsbanner Schwarz-Rot-Gold and the Iron Front paramilitary organisations against the rising extremist forces of the SA, Stahlhelm and Rotfrontkämpferbund. From 1923 Wels also became a member of the executive of the Labour and Socialist International. After the 1930 Reichstag election, Wels advocated the toleration of the cabinet of Chancellor Heinrich Brüning, who had lost the support of the DNVP deputies. Even after the Preußenschlag of July 1932 against Otto Braun's government in the Free State of Prussia, he spoke against a general strike; however after the Reichstag election of November 1932 he rejected any negotiations with the new Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher.